Swagger Clause in BW

This is something that has been bothering me for a while, and now I've seen a couple people using these kind of teams during STour Week 2. With BW Cup starting now and two more weeks of BW STour still to come, I believe this needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

There isn't too much to be said about this to be honestly, this "strategy" works exactly the same in BW as it does in XY/ORAS. Seeing that it was deemed uncompetitive in XY, it makes no sense to me for it to be allowed in BW. It reduces every game to coinflips and takes away any sort of player control, if you can't break out of confusion, tough luck. The only difference between BW and XY swagger/swagplay teams is that there's maybe couple more users available in XY OU (klefki and thundurus since it's banned in BW OU), but that doesn't mean anything really since the move itself was deemed uncompetitive.

I can't quite remember all the games this was used in, but I have dug up a few replays from STour:

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-143751
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-143720
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ou-143084
 
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I actually made that team months ago just to make it banned lol
(RD Tornadus > Volbeat pls u don't want to lose Riolu by sandstorm, and take off brightpowders and put leftovers for the same reason ffs)

Btw yeah I've always wondered why some clauses had been extended to some older gens (Baton Pass) while others just kept applied to ORAS only (this one). There aren't any differences between Gen 6 and 5 for what concerns SwagPlay mechanics and its stupid method. ORAS just has better swagplayer (Thundurus and Klefki) but the formula is always the same: Swagger, Substitute/ThunderWave to increase lucky shots, Ditto to abuse of Atk raise, etc. BW has even CopyRoar but that's another story since that "strategy" has not luck factor revolved around it.
Stalls have great matchup against SwagPlay usually, especially thanks to Chansey that doesn't take huge hits from selfhits (less than 10% at +6 Atk w/Evio), but this issue can be easily solved with a more solid teambuild (or just using more Taunts)
I feel like the actual use of this strategy matters in order to make Council have a word about it, but I honestly think we shouldn't go to the point in which we have one or several Tours partially ruined by this "forcing 50%" strategy (can't tell it's not, since it got banned from Gen 6 for this reason) to realize Swagger should be banned in every Gen in which there are Prankster users who can abuse of it.
 
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I'm completely in a favor of a ban, but doesn't this mean we're not getting rid of Swagger in BW for the BW Cup?
 

aurora

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I'm not sure if this Swagger ban is relevant to BW Ubers, but if it isn't, and I'll presume it isn't, I'd like to ask if it could be banned there too.

It's as horrible a 'strategy' there as it is anywhere else. It also lets Sweep win games with Swagger Luvdisc in the rain, which is just despicable.
 

Bughouse

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I don't think it's a good idea to tinker with BW Ubers in the same way that ORAS Ubers was tinkered with and AG was created. Especially if you want to change it this way, because the strategy of Luvdisc Swagger in permanent rain is in fact a legal strat going all the way back to ADV Ubers.
 

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